NEH Post 2: Burwell School

I'm back with more of my workshop with the National Endowment for the Humanities. Sorry if you aren't a history buff and were looking for another book post; one is on its way later tonight or tomorrow :)

So anyway, we spent the next morning (Saturday) on the road to close-by Hillsborough, NC to see the historic Burwell School. Some background: The Burwell School was a home that was occupied by Rev. and Mrs. Burwell and their 6(?) children. The Rev. Burwell brought his family to Hillsborough to pastor a church there, and the local doctor asked Mrs. Burwell to consider beginning a girls' academy, which she accepted. Thus, the Burwell school began with boarders and day students. The curriculum was interesting when we got a chance to see the list of courses. The house itself wasn't all that large for boarding students.

None of that information was the purpose of visiting the school; this is: Mrs. Burwell held an enslaved person by the name of Elizabeth Keckly. Elizabeth, or Lizzy as she was called, was an integral part of the girls' school and actually learned to read and write as part of her time at the Burwell School. Eventually, Elizabeth Keckly became an free woman working as a seamstress. Her work was much sought after and her most famous client and was none other than Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln. Elizabeth ultimately became a close friend and confidante to Mrs. Lincoln as her personal seamstress in the White House. Lizzy eventually wrote a memoir entitled Behind the Scenes: 30 Years a Slave and 4 Years in the White House. It is said that her relationship with Mrs. Lincoln deteriorated because of the publication.

Anyway, so much of that story began at the Burwell School. Here are some photos of the inside of the home/school. The property originally had 12 (!!) buildings, including a stand alone kitchen and a "necessary house," which is...well, we call it a restroom now :) I also took a photo of one of the school houses for your enjoyment/curiosity

It's not an original, but this is an example of what the girls would wear at the school. The more petticoats over your hoop skirt, the better! Another important fact: more material and layers meant more wealth.

An example of the bedding arrangements. This is half of one room and as you can see it has to sleep at least 3 girls. Imagine, boarding at a school and sleeping in the same bed with someone you did not know!

This is one of the original school houses. Inside, there are (guess!) chalk boards and long benches. There are no traditional desks. I can't imagine going to school in this room in the summer in so many layers of petticoats!

It's not so much part of the trip, but we did finish this part of the day with a Barbecue lunch on the school grounds. I know I've mentioned previously that this program is for teachers Nationwide and Internationally, but this was the truest moment of that fact so far. It was so interesting to see people from other parts of the United States (and beyond!) enjoy southern barbecue, baked beans, hush puppies and the like. Also, I tried a new food that day, too. Along with what I would consider the traditional fare, there was a dish called corn pudding. I had never had it before but I was on an adventure, so I gave it a try. It was AMAZING!! I'm going to try my hand at making it before summer is over. Anyone got a good recipe?

I hope you enjoyed seeing my trip through my eyes. Next post will contain information about my first Durham Bulls Game! I'm trying to catch up while I'm on vacation at Oak Island, but hey, a girl has to get her tan on sometime!!

Beach Reading

From my summer reading blog:

I use twitter to follow the authors whose books I love or want to know more about. Recently, I've noticed there are lots of other book people who are also teachers. One of the things these folks are doing is something called Bookaday, where they read and review a book each day. Now, I'm a voracious reader and I love getting through a good novel (unless it's TOO good, then I don't want it to end!). But I don't know if I'm up for the challenge of a book each day. But I'm going to try it out.

I'm leaving for Oak Island, NC for a week's vacation on Sunday, and I would like to read a book each day while I am gone for a total of 6 not counting travel days. Here's what I'm taking:

Divergent by Veronica Roth
Abandon by Meg Cabot
Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins
Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult
Graceling by Kim Cashore
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Those are all the physical books I am taking along. I'm also taking my Barnes and Noble nook which is loaded up with other good things to read.

Oh! And I promised I would review Lauren Oliver's Delirium and let me just say it was wonderful! I think that teens would really like it because it is a) dystopian, which is all the rage right now, and b) it has a love story about two people who, of course, can't be together because of societal restrictions that they later discover...

I will leave you there. What I will say is that it's a page turner that moves quickly, and I'm fascinated with the angle Oliver takes on the idea of love being a sickness that can destroy you. I think this book is for anyone who has ever been even the least bit cynical about love or finding the right person or any of those other pesky things we worry about when it comes to relationships. I'm kind of disappointed, though, that the book is actually part of a series. Some books are just so well done, can't we just leave them be? Maybe I'll think this part over (ha!) while I'm relaxing on the beach next week :)

NEH Crafting Freedom, post 1 Stagville and Milton NC

June 23-28 I attended a workshop entitled "Crafting Freedom" through the National Endowment for the Humanities. A colleague of mine urged me to apply to an NEH workshop, as she has attended many of them and has always learned so much to bring back to the classroom. I applied back in March and got word that I was invited to attend the second session June 23-28. Excited? Yep! Bonus: the workshop was in Chapel Hill!

I started my trip a little early and headed to Raleigh to spend some much needed quality time with my close friend Ashley. She took the day off and we went to the

outlet malls both in Smithfield and Mebane. We didn't do *too* much damage, but I did get some good deals on some cute clothes for the beach :) It was fun to just hang out and talk and catch up in person as opposed to our weekly chats on the phone and facebook. Sometimes, you just need to interact with a person, you know?

Anyway, our orientation to the workshop was held on Thursday night and then Friday morning we were off and running!

Our first stop was historic Stagville in Durham, NC. Stagville was a plantation that held over 300 slaves. Here is an example of a home where up to 4 families of 8-12 people would live.

Slavery was an ugly institution. However, what we saw at Stagville showed just how large a contribution African Americans made to the plantation life and even its infrastructure. We were shown a mule barn that is believed to have been built by slave labor.

The outside has clearly aged. But the inside of the barn was an amazing example of craftsmanship. Here's a photo of the top of the barn; you can see how it resembles ship construction:

The inside of the barn was by far my favorite part of the trip to Stagville. After lunch, we rode a bus an hour north of Durham to the town of Milton, NC. There, we visited a small church whose pews were crafted by a free black by the name of Thomas Day. In exchange for his work as an artisan, he and his family were allowed to sit in the downstairs congregation with the white members of the church instead of sitting in the balcony with slaves and other blacks. Another cool fact about Thomas Day: he petitioned the NC legislature to allow his wife, Aquila Wilson, to immigrate from Virginia to North Carolina as an exception to a newly enacted slave immigration law. 61 people, including the Attorney General of North Carolina, signed his petition in support, and Aquila was allowed to move to Milton.

example Thomas Day pew

We also visited the Thomas Day furniture museum housed in Union Tavern. The Tavern used to be Day's workshop where he created custom furniture for residents of Milton and beyond.

As you can see, Day's furniture was beautifully constructed using 19th century hand tools. This is just an example of his work; he made everything from cradles and bassinets to full home interiors and even coffins. As one of few free blacks in North Carolina he built a business and personal reputation that transcended the laws that were slowly becoming more and more restrictive and harsh. His is not the only story I want to tell. There is the story of Elizabeth Keckly who worked in the Burwell School, and she is the subject of the second post about NEH.

There is a lot more to see from our trip, so be on the lookout for another post about the Burwell School and my excursion to a Durham Bulls baseball game!

Breaking up is hard to do!

From my summer reading blog:

I've done it again.
I've done that thing where I convince myself that I must read this book/article/series and if I don't finish or I don't like it then I'm somewhat subhuman. This time, it was the Mortal Instruments series. As I said in my last post I had walked away from the book before and had recently returned to it. This is my breakup letter. It's over, for good!

Mortal Instruments,
You were fun for the first few pages, after I got past the confusion about the many characters, visible and invisible. Human and not-so-much. But I can't go on!! I'm sorry, Jace and Clary, but I need a break from you and all your werewolf-vampire-rune-spell-shadowhunter drama! Sometimes you just have to walk away for the sake of your sanity and continued reading life. This is one of those times. It's not you; well, yes it is.

Love, Me

I can't waste any more time drudging through this book/series for the sake of saying I read it. I have to keep moving or I'll never get through the rest of the huge stack of books on my desk marked "to read". There are so many that I've picked up along the way saying And you're not reading this to know what book I'm whining about, are you? No! You're reading because you want to know what I'm actually reading, not pretending to read!

Next on my list is finishing Lauren Oliver's Delirium, which is wonderful so far. I will definitely let you know when I finish it and give it the review it deserves!

Book Blogging!

Woohoo!

I have wanted to do this for so long, but I really couldn't think of a good way to go about accomplishing what I wanted to do. But I think I'm on to something here. At the top of the main screen you should see a new page called Summer Reading 2011.

A colleague of mine had the idea to blog about the books that we read over the summer over on our school website. Sounds like an awesome idea to me! I think it will provide me with the outlet to do the writing AND the accountability to continue to share what I'm reading. So I'm super super excited! I will be sharing those same posts here so that whoever reads the blog regularly can access the book posts all in the same place without having to navigate our school website. Please, leave me your recommendations as the summer progresses; while I do have a wish list of books I want to acquire I'm always looking for something new, too!

Happy reading!

#YASaves

In the last 6 months or so I've become involved in the twitterverse. You can follow me @lindseylea

#shamelessplug

Anyway, most of the people I follow on twitter are YA writers. I follow them for 2 reasons: 1) to see what they have coming up with tours, promotions and new books and 2) to keep up with news related to the reading and writing of the books I love so dearly and regularly recommend to my students.

Here's what has happened (literally) overnight:

This article ran in the Wall Street Journal (@wsj) with yesterday's date. The writer begins with a story about a mom who left a B&N completely disheartened because she couldn't find anything to give her 13-year old child to read as a welcome home gift (not that it's my business, but who sends their 13-year old child away long enough that they need a "welcome home" gift?). I digress. Anyway, the article goes on to say that 40 years ago there was no YA fiction, so there wasn't a genre to "deal with." Excuse me, deal with? You deal with bad behavior and you deal with bad situations. You don't deal with books and a teen's need to read them. Yes, I said need.

So. Where do I go from here?

There are a few different statements I need to make as my own response so the three of you who read this blog can be the ones I vent to:

It is not the responsibility of YA authors to censor what a child/teen reads. That's up to the parent. If you don't like the covers of the books, don't buy them. If you don't want your kid to read, keep hiding them under a rock and then wonder why they have no social skills and no contemporary knowledge, but don't ruin YA for the rest of us.

If you want to keep certain things out of your child's hands, then do so. But shouldn't you bother to read what they're looking at? Or ask around? Or read a review online before you cast your judgment. "It's too dark" isn't a justified reason unless you've read the book.

B&N, you've got to do a better job with your employment process. How do you allow a person who has not read any of the books in the YA section to assist customers in the YA section?! I'm just saying: I end up recommending titles to parents and teens alike every time I'm in a bookstore because that's just what happens. I've read the books, making me an educated source.

WSJ, did you even read any YA lit, or did you just stop the first ultra-protective parent who whined to you? If you haven't experienced Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak or Ellen Hopkins' Crank or Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games then you can't pass judgment on them or the genre as a whole. What about the Harry Potter series? Did you even get the point, after thousands of pages across 7 books that good conquers evil and that love is the most powerful force of all? Is that too dark for you? Are you the people who have tried to get that beloved series banned in schools? Yeah, we have to fight battles of evil and sometimes there are sacrifices to be made but you're kidding me if you want me to believe that it's too much for a 13-18 year old person to wrap their head around.

YA authors are pushing the boundaries in fiction because it's their way of saying something that needs to be said. John Green writes incredible books about troubled teens. Looking for Alaska explores suicide, Paper Towns explores teen rebellion, and his collaboration with David Levithan Will Grayson, Will Grayson explores (gasp!) gay teens and their relationships. Ellen Hopkins' books explore drug addiction, teen pregnancy, abuse, divorce, you name it. If no one could connect with these topics, the books wouldn't sell. I admire the nerve and guts these writers have to put this kind of material out there.

Those of us who are outraged by the WSJ article are using the hashtag #YASaves to tell our stories defending the books and authors we love. If you have a story, please join us. YA is just one way for students to connect with each other and with the world around them.

Restless

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Drifting throught the wind
Wanting to start again
Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin
Like a house of cards
One blow from caving in
Do you ever feel already buried deep
Six feet under scream
But no one seems to hear a thing

Katy Perry, "Firework"

I'm having a tough go of it right now. I'm not going to lie; I feel stuck in a rut. I've spent so much time going to college and taking classes to advance in my field but so far it hasn't gotten me anywhere. My husband and I are ready to move to a bigger place and toy with starting a family. I've thought about and researched PhD programs close to home and some that would require us to move. I can't decide what I want to do. I can't decide what I need to do. I don't know what the next step is, and it's driving me crazy. I'm a planner. I like to know what happens next when I've completed a task, and I like to know so I can prepare. I hate feeling unprepared and what's worse is not having a plan at all. I'm feeling restless and the only place I can seem to find solace is in a book. Isn't that ironic? I don't know how to deal with that particular feeling either; it's soothing and frightening all at the same time.

I know this post seems like a hodge podge of "poor me"; maybe it is. I have so much on my mind that I can't seem to sort out the way I usually do. I just need to find my way out of this rut before too long. Any ideas?